iCloud Photo Library only uploads every few minutes

My iCloud Photo Library is uploading at rather good speeds (about 10 to 20MB/s), but it only does so at intervals of 5 to 10 minutes where the upload speed is stuck at 0. This causes the upload to take forever even with my fast upload speed.

This is normal. Photos uploads in bursts. Remember that you're uploading your data to a shared infrastructure, with only so much bandwidth and resources to go around. If it's particularly busy, it'll slow down like this.

Just let it happen in the background and don't worry about it. Once this initial upload completes, it tends to perform quite well, immediately uploading photos you've taken when you return to WiFi and downloading them to other devices quickly.

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